Gozde Mercan

University of Toronto, Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, Faculty Member

University of Oslo, Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan (MultiLing), Affiliate

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I am a psycholinguist studying the mental representation, production, and online comprehension of languages in mono- and multilinguals, mainly through structural priming experiments (with self-paced reading, eye-tracking, picture description, written sentence completion, and web-based tasks).

Currently, I am interested in the processing of Turkish by foreign language learners, heritage speakers, and attriters in Canada.

Here is my personal website:
https://sites.google.com/view/gozdemercan
Supervisors: Annette Hohenberger, Deniz Zeyrek, Maria Polinsky, Hanne Gram Simonsen, and G. Daniel Véronique

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REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES by Gozde Mercan

Structural priming in the production of Turkish possessive noun phrases and noun clauses

We provide an overview of a structural priming study in Turkish and an analysis of the data using... more We provide an overview of a structural priming study in Turkish and an analysis of the data using logit mixed-effects modeling. As Turkish is an agglutinative language, it constitutes a unique testing ground for the universal and language-specific aspects of structural priming and linguistic representations. Using the idiosyncratic properties of Turkish, this study demonstrates priming effects in written production of Turkish by adult native speakers. The structures of interest are possessive noun phrases (nominal structure) (e.g. Ali[Ayşe-nin ses-in]-i duydu: Ali [Ayşe-GEN voice-3SG.POSS]-ACC heard “Ali heard [Ayşe’s voice]”) and noun clauses (verbal structure) which are embedded complementizer phrases with a genitive subject and a nominalized verbal predicate (e.g. Ali[Ayşe-nin git-tiğ-in]-i duydu: Ali [Ayşe-GEN leave-VN-3SG.POSS]-ACC heard “Ali heard [that Ayşe was leaving/(had) left]”. Certain verbs such as duy- (“to hear”) allow both such nominal and verbal structures as their direct object. The two structures have the same GEN-POSS morphology, but different inner constituents. Participants completed sentence target fragments (which are equally likely to be completed with either type under normal circumstances) with more nominal structures after nominal primes and with more verbal structures after verbal primes, which indicates a significant priming effect. Structural priming accesses the inner nominal vs. verbal constituents of these structures and is sensitive to the distinction between phrases and clauses. Despite their identical external morphological template, the two structures are represented distinctly and not as a single, general GEN-POSS form in Turkish native speakers’ minds.
READ-ONLY FULL TEXT: https://rdcu.be/bT4Z4

The production of passives by English-Norwegian and Turkish-Norwegian bilinguals: a preliminary investigation using a cross-linguistic structural priming manipulation

by Gozde Mercan and Hanne Gram Simonsen

This preliminary study tested cross-linguistic structural priming of passives in two groups of ad... more This preliminary study tested cross-linguistic structural priming of passives in two groups of adult bilinguals speaking Norwegian-English and Norwegian-Turkish to understand the nature of syntactic mental representations in bilingual minds. Passives in spoken Norwegian are structurally similar to those in English, whereas passives in Turkish are distinct in being morphologically constructed. A shared syntax account based on the similarity of the structures would predict structural priming effects for the Norwegian-English group but not the Norwegian-Turkish group. Results of a computerized picture description task showed that participants provided more active descriptions than passives, but did not indicate any priming in terms of an increased likelihood of repeating the type of the prime they heard in Norwegian in their target picture description in English or Turkish. This can be related to the small sample size or the observation that there were too few passive productions overall. We thus ran an additional analysis which indicated that participants were more likely to produce passives when the target pictures contained inanimate agents. We also ran a separate analysis on Turkish target responses, which did not reveal an effect of prime type on the emphasis of thematic role (agent vs. patient). However, this analysis also showed that pictures with inanimate agents were more likely to be described with target structures emphasizing the patient rather than the agent. We suggest that further research is required to get a clearer picture of the role of the similarity of passives in cross-linguistic structural priming. READ-ONLY FULL TEXT: https://rdcu.be/bRKNh

REFEREED BOOK CHAPTERS by Gozde Mercan

Türker-van der Heiden, E. & Mercan, G. (2019). The Acquisition of Turkish (Genitive)-Possessive Structures by Adult Norwegian Learners

This study investigates the development of phrasal and clausal (Genitive)-Possessive structures i... more This study investigates the development of phrasal and clausal (Genitive)-Possessive structures in L2 Turkish. The phrasal structures under scrutiny are possessive noun phrases and nominal phrases/compounds consisting of a bare noun and a following possessive noun. The clausal structures are subordinated noun clauses with verbal predicates nominalized through the -mA and -DIK suffixes. The data comprise translations and exam essays of Norwegian university students who received Turkish instruction at the University of Oslo across four semesters over two years. We provide a descriptive analysis of the target and non-target structures produced by these learners. This study may pave the way for a future Processability Theory analysis of these structures in the data from this particular group of L2 learners.

Mercan, G. (2016). Structural Priming in L2 Turkish: A Study on Possessive Noun Phrases and Noun Clauses. In A. Gürel (Ed.), Second Language Acquisition of Turkish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Structural priming is the facilitation in the processing of a linguistic form due to repetition (... more Structural priming is the facilitation in the processing of a linguistic form due to repetition (Bock 1986). This study investigates structural priming in second language (L2) acquisition of Turkish in relation to the representation of L2 grammar. The linguistic structures investigated are possessive noun phrases (NPs) and noun clauses with nominalized verbs, which share the same external genitive-possessive morpho-syntax in Turkish. Adult L2 learners first read prime sentences, and then completed target fragments. Overall, they produced more possessive NPs than noun clauses. Crucially, they produced more possessive NPs after reading NP primes, and more noun clauses following noun clause primes. This suggests that L2 learners have two distinct mental representations for these structures, rather than a single, unspecified one.

PUBLICATIONS IN REFEREED CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS by Gozde Mercan

Bahadır, G. & Hohenberger, A. (2013). Yapısal Hazırlama ve Karşılıklı Konuşmada Sözdizimsel Uyumun İncelenmesi. In Ö. Ceylan (Ed.), UDKEK 2011 Proceedings (pp. 173-185). İstanbul: İstanbul Kültür University.

(Structural Priming and the Investigation of Syntactic Alignment in Conversation)

Bahadır, G. & Hohenberger A. (2012). Türkçedeki ilgi-iyelik yapılarında yapısal hazırlama. In É. Kincses-Nagy & M. Biacsi (Eds.), The Szeged Conference: Proceedings of the 15th ICTL (pp. 111-123). Szeged: University of Szeged, Department of Altaic Studies.

(Structural Priming of Genitive-Possessive Constructions in Turkish)

Bahadır, G. & Polinsky, M. (2011). Structural Priming and the Phrasal/Clausal Distinction: The Case of CQs. In A. Botinis (Ed.), Proceedings of the 4th ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop ExLing (pp. 15-19). ISCA and the University of Athens.

by Gozde Mercan and Maria Polinsky

Blochowiak, J. & Bahadır, G. (2011). Semantic Priming at the Sentence Level with the Connective ‘Because’. In A. Botinis (Ed.), Proceedings of the 4th ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop ExLing (pp. 31-35). ISCA and the University of Athens.

Bahadır, G. (2009). Yabancı Dil Öğreniminde Motivasyon: Türkçeyi Yabancı Dil Olarak Öğrenen Bireylerde Yönelimler ve Yürütücü Motivasyon. n N. Adalı & F. Uçar Boyraz (Eds.), 2. Psikoloji Lisansüstü Öğrencileri Kongresi Bildiri Tam Metin Kitabı (pp. 22.32). Ankara: Detamat/Ankara University.

(Motivation in Foreign Language Learning: Orientations and Executive Motivation in Learners of Tu... more

THESES by Gozde Mercan

Bahadır, G. (2012). Structural Priming in Turkish Genitive-Possessive Constructions. Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation).

iii I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in acc... more iii I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work.

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Bahadır, G. (2005). Les Orientations et la Motivation Exécutive dans l’Apprentissage du Turc comme Langue Etrangère ou Seconde. University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France. (Unpublished Master’s Thesis).

(Orientations and Executive Motivation in Learners of Turkish as a Second or Foreign Language)

PAPER PRESENTATIONS IN PEER-REVIEWED CONFERENCES by Gozde Mercan

Türker-van der Heiden, E. & Mercan, G. (2015a). The Acquisition of Turkish Genitive- Possessive Structures by Norwegian Learners. Paper presented at PALA 2015, Østfold University College, Halden, Norway, 19 September, 2015.

by Gozde Mercan and Emel Türker-van der Heiden

Bahadır, G. & Hohenberger, A. (2012). Structural Priming in the Comprehension of Turkish Nouns and Nominalized Verbs. Paper presented at 16th ICTL, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, 18-21 September, 2012.

Bahadır, G. (2011). Türkçede Örtülü Sorular. Paper presented at 25. Ulusal Dilbilim Kurultayı, Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey, 5-7 May, 2011.

(Concealed Questions in Turkish)

Bahadır, G. & Hohenberger, A. (2009). Türkçenin Biçimdizimsel İşlemlenmesinde Yapısal Hazırlama. Paper presented at 23. Ulusal Dilbilim Kurultayı, Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta, T. R. North Cyprus, 14-15 May, 2009.

(Structural Priming in the Morpho-Syntactic Processing of Turkish)

Bahadır, G. (2009). Syntactic Representations in Language Production and Comprehension: Insights from Structural Priming. Paper presented at 2nd MGML, Mersin, Turkey, 12-13 March, 2009.

Bahadır, G. (2008). Orientations and Executive Motivation in L2 Learners of Turkish. Paper presented at EUROSLA 18, Aix-en-Provence, France, 13 September, 2008.

POSTER PRESENTATIONS IN PEER-REVIEWED CONFERENCES by Gozde Mercan

Türker-van der Heiden, E. & Mercan, G. (2015). The Acquisition of L3/Ln Morphosyntax in Norwegian Learners of Turkish. Poster presented at MLA3 Workshop on Multilingual Language Acquisition, Processing and Use, University of Tromsø, CASTL, Tromsø, Norway, 20-21 March, 2015.

by Gozde Mercan and Emel Türker-van der Heiden

Bahadır, G. & Hohenberger, A. (2012). An Eye-Tracking Study on Structural Priming in Turkish Language Comprehension. Poster presented at COGNITIVE-IX, İstanbul Medipol University, İstanbul, Turkey, 13-15 April, 2012.

Bahadır, G. & Hohenberger, A. (2010). Degrees of Nominalization in Turkish: A Comprehension-to- Production Priming Study. Poster presented at AMLaP 2010 Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, York, UK, 6-8 September, 2010.

Structural priming in the production of Turkish possessive noun phrases and noun clauses

The production of passives by English-Norwegian and Turkish-Norwegian bilinguals: a preliminary investigation using a cross-linguistic structural priming manipulation

by Gozde Mercan and Hanne Gram Simonsen

Türker-van der Heiden, E. & Mercan, G. (2019). The Acquisition of Turkish (Genitive)-Possessive Structures by Adult Norwegian Learners

Mercan, G. (2016). Structural Priming in L2 Turkish: A Study on Possessive Noun Phrases and Noun Clauses. In A. Gürel (Ed.), Second Language Acquisition of Turkish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

(Structural Priming and the Investigation of Syntactic Alignment in Conversation)

(Structural Priming of Genitive-Possessive Constructions in Turkish)

by Gozde Mercan and Maria Polinsky

(Motivation in Foreign Language Learning: Orientations and Executive Motivation in Learners of Tu... more

Bahadır, G. (2012). Structural Priming in Turkish Genitive-Possessive Constructions. Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. (Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation).

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(Orientations and Executive Motivation in Learners of Turkish as a Second or Foreign Language)

by Gozde Mercan and Emel Türker-van der Heiden

Bahadır, G. (2011). Türkçede Örtülü Sorular. Paper presented at 25. Ulusal Dilbilim Kurultayı, Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey, 5-7 May, 2011.

(Concealed Questions in Turkish)

(Structural Priming in the Morpho-Syntactic Processing of Turkish)

Bahadır, G. (2009). Syntactic Representations in Language Production and Comprehension: Insights from Structural Priming. Paper presented at 2nd MGML, Mersin, Turkey, 12-13 March, 2009.

Bahadır, G. (2008). Orientations and Executive Motivation in L2 Learners of Turkish. Paper presented at EUROSLA 18, Aix-en-Provence, France, 13 September, 2008.

by Gozde Mercan and Emel Türker-van der Heiden

Bahadır, G. & Polinsky M. (2010). Structural Priming of Concealed Questions. Poster presented at the 6th International Workshop on Language Production, Edinburgh, UK, 2-4 September, 2010.

by Gozde Mercan and Maria Polinsky

Blochowiak, J. & Bahadır, G. (2010). Semantic Priming at the Sentence Level: Causal vs. Purposive ‘Because’. Poster presented in the 6th International Workshop on Language Production, Edinburgh, UK, 2-4 September, 2010.

Bahadır, G. & Hohenberger, A. (2009). Morpho-syntactic Processing and Priming in Turkish: Noun Phrases vs. Noun Clauses. Poster presented at CUNY, 22nd Conference on Human Sentence Processing, UC Davis, CA, 26-28 March, 2009.

The present study aims to contribute to the understanding of the role that morpho-syntax plays in... more The present study aims to contribute to the understanding of the role that morpho-syntax plays in sentence processing in Turkish. We investigate the processing of a pair of genitive-possessive constructions with nouns and verbs. These constructions are potentially suitable for further structural priming studies.

In Turkish possessive noun phrases, the possessor is in genitive and the head agrees with the possessor (Kornfilt, 1997):

(1) Biz [Ali-nin kitab-ı] -nı oku -du -k
We Ali-GEN book-3sg-ACC read-Past-1pl
“We read Ali’s book”.

Turkish noun clauses, on the other hand, are clausal NPs subordinated in larger constructions. In non-finite NCs, the verb of the embedded clause is nominalized by attaching a subordinating suffix (-DIK) to the predicate (Göksel & Kerslake, 2005):

(2) Biz [Ali-nin ayrıl -dığ-ı] -nı duy-du-k
We Ali-GEN leave-VN-3sg -ACC hear-Past-1pl
“We heard that Ali left.”

Remarkably, the NC has the overall structure of a genitive-possessive construction. Therefore, a sentence fragment like (3) can be filled in with either a noun like gözler-i-ni (eyes-3sg-ACC) or a nominalized-verb: gel-diğ-i-ni (come-VN-3sg-ACC).

(3) Korsan prenses-in …………………….. hatırla-dı
Pirate princess-GEN remember-Past3sg
“The pirate remembered the princess’s… (eyes:N)/that the princess… (came:V-DIK)”

To investigate the frequencies of native speakers’ preferences of nouns/verbs in such contexts, a written sentence completion task with fragments such as (3) with 14 target matrix verbs was administered. A profile for each target verb was derived. Verbs fell into one of the three categories: noun-biased, balanced or verb-biased. For 13 verbs, participants provided both nouns and nominalized-verbs. The results show that the choice of word-class is rather secondary as long as the overall morpho-syntactic structure of the genitive-possessive construction is well-formed.

The balanced verbs serve as stimuli in an ongoing structural priming study. A written sentence-completion task is currently being carried out to understand whether there is priming between a fragment with a matrix verb that can take either a noun (“wash”-4a) or a verb and another with a matrix verb allowing both (“think”-4b). If participants insert nominalized-verbs in (4b) in addition to the already expected nouns, this will imply that there is structural priming across word-classes due to morpho-syntactic similarity. The amount of priming will be compared with that among verbs taking the same type of objects.

(4a) Adam kadın -ın …………… yıkı -yor (PRIME, N)
Man woman-GEN wash-Pres3sg

(4b) Adam kadın -ın ………… düşün-üyor (TARGET, N or V)
Man woman -GEN think -Pres3sg

In further confederate-scripting and visual-world eye-movement experiments investigating priming “between” production and comprehension, the prime will be a complete sentence with either a possessive-NP or a NC; and the target, a fragment including only a subject NP and a GEN-noun. Participants will be asked to complete the fragment while looking at a visual stimulus depicting an event that can be described with both forms. Priming will be measured as in the previous study. The results are expected to shed some light on the level of representation syntactic priming taps that is possibly shared between comprehension and production (Branigan, Pickering & Cleland, 2000).

REFERENCES

Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J., & Cleland, A.A. (2000). Syntactic coordination in dialogue. Cognition, 75, B13-B25.
Göksel, A. & C. Kerslake. (2005). Turkish, A Comprehensive Grammar. London: Routledge.
Kornfilt, J. (1997). Turkish Grammar. London: Routledge.

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Semantic priming at the sentence level: causal vs. purposive because

ExLing, 2011

In the present study we use the property of some linguistic items to express more than one meanin... more In the present study we use the property of some linguistic items to express more than one meaning in order to investigate whether there is semantic priming at the sentence level. To test such a priming effect we use the connective because that can express a causal or purposive relation. If there is a priming effect, then participants will be expected to use causal because following causal primes and purposive because following purposive primes more frequently. The preliminary results do not reveal a clear priming effect but a slight trend toward priming, which we will continue to investigate increasing the number of participants.

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The Acquisition of “Verb+Preposition Combinations” By L2 Learners of English

The Acquisition of “Verb+Preposition Combinations” By L2 Learners of English. Gozde, Bahadir (201... more

Structural priming in L2 Turkish

Language acquisition & language disorders, May 19, 2016

Chapter 10. The acquisition of Turkish (genitive-)possessive structures by adult Norwegian learners

Processability Approaches to Language Acquisition Research & Teaching, 2019

Structural priming and the phrasal/clausal distinction: The case of concealed questions

Proceedings of International Conferences of Experimental Linguistics

This paper investigates whether structural priming is sensitive to the phrasal vs. clausal nature... more This paper investigates whether structural priming is sensitive to the phrasal vs. clausal nature of the constructions it tests. To that end, we examine NPs that receive a question-like interpretation when embedded under certain predicates. These NPs are known as "concealed question (CQ) NPs". We first report the results of a pilot study that establishes co-occurrence patterns of the target embedding predicates. We then present two structural priming studies which test CQ NPs with "overt embedded questions": "embedded wh-questions" and "embedded declaratives". Both written sentence completion tasks demonstrate structural priming, which turns out to be sensitive to the phrase-clause distinction. Results: Participants produced more NP completions than EQ completions overall (significant main effect of Completion Type: F=31,515; p=.00; η2=.429), consistent with the results of the pilot study. There is also a significant twoway interaction between Prime Type and Completion Type (F=5,398; p<.05; η2=.114): Participants produced more NP-responses after NP-primes than after EQ-primes, and more EQ-responses after EQ-primes. Therefore, despite the general high frequency of NPs, there is priming in the alternation between NPs and EQs. Due to frequency, this priming is not symmetrical and seems to work better for NPs than for questions. References Methodology and Materials: We conducted an offline cloze test with 24 sentence fragments to examine the natural frequencies of co-occurrence of CQ NPs and overt embedded questions (OECs).

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Is Structural Priming Sensitive to the Phrase-Clause

Semantic priming at the sentence level: causal vs. purposive because

Proceedings of International Conferences of Experimental Linguistics, 2019

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The production of passives by English-Norwegian and Turkish-Norwegian bilinguals: a preliminary investigation using a cross-linguistic structural priming manipulation

Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, 2019

for sharing their stimulus pictures. We are grateful to all the participants who volunteered to t... more

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Structural priming in the production of Turkish possessive noun phrases and noun clauses

Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, 2019

We provide an overview of a structural priming study in Turkish and an analysis of the data using... more We provide an overview of a structural priming study in Turkish and an analysis of the data using logit mixed-effects modeling. As Turkish is an agglutinative language, it constitutes a unique testing ground for the universal and language-specific aspects of structural priming and linguistic representations. Using the idiosyncratic properties of Turkish, this study demonstrates priming effects in written production of Turkish by adult native speakers. The structures of interest are possessive noun phrases (nominal structure) (e.g. Ali[Ayse-nin ses-in]-i duydu: Ali [Ayse-GEN voice-3SG.POSS]-ACC heard “Ali heard [Ayse’s voice]”) and noun clauses (verbal structure) which are embedded complementizer phrases with a genitive subject and a nominalized verbal predicate (e.g. Ali[Ayse-nin git-tig-in]-i duydu: Ali [Ayse-GEN leave-VN-3SG.POSS]-ACC heard “Ali heard [that Ayse was leaving/(had) left]”. Certain verbs such as duy- (“to hear”) allow both such nominal and verbal structures as their direct object. The two structures have the same GEN-POSS morphology, but different inner constituents. Participants completed sentence target fragments (which are equally likely to be completed with either type under normal circumstances) with more nominal structures after nominal primes and with more verbal structures after verbal primes, which indicates a significant priming effect. Structural priming accesses the inner nominal vs. verbal constituents of these structures and is sensitive to the distinction between phrases and clauses. Despite their identical external morphological template, the two structures are represented distinctly and not as a single, general GEN-POSS form in Turkish native speakers’ minds.

Gozde Mercan

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REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES by Gozde Mercan

REFEREED BOOK CHAPTERS by Gozde Mercan

PUBLICATIONS IN REFEREED CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS by Gozde Mercan

THESES by Gozde Mercan

PAPER PRESENTATIONS IN PEER-REVIEWED CONFERENCES by Gozde Mercan

POSTER PRESENTATIONS IN PEER-REVIEWED CONFERENCES by Gozde Mercan

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